Joe Manchin III on Education Democratic WV Governor

$540 million in ongoing school construction

I am asking the Legislature to give the SBA more borrowing flexibility. This will allow us to create a steady revenue stream and provide safer schools at cheaper bond rates.

Increased teacher pay

Making A Difference In Education
• State received an "A" for technology from Education Week
• Gave state universities increased research flexibility
• Increased teacher pay by up to 19%
• Launched statewide business/education partnership
• Enacted the first comprehensive teacher pay package in more than 15 years
• Gave state universities increased flexibility to pursue new research that could spawn new discoveries.

Participate in federal program Race to the Top.

Our states need more time to properly evaluate the changes needed to resubmit our applications, as well as to engage in meaningful and collaborative discussions with our legislatures, our schools, our unions, and our communities. We need to make informed changes to our applications, whether in the area of evaluations, turnarounds, standards, or data collection. These changes will be stronger if they are informed by the comments of those who reviewed our initial application.

Therefore, we request that you considerably accelerate the timeline for release of peer reviewers' comments and scores from Phase One or extend the deadline to submit our Phase 2 application until July 1, 2010; so our states can continue the necessary hard work, without losing momentum, to reform education and apply for Race to the Top Phase Two. As Governors -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- we were proud to stand with President Obama, and with you, to bring about real systemic change in education through the Race to the Top competition. Under the first phase of competition, you saw forty states and the District of Columbia respond to your call. While only fifteen states and the District of Columbia were selected as finalists for Phase One, we all remain committed to pursuing necessary reforms to help ensure that our states' applications are competitive for the second phase of funding.

The finalists were announced on March 4, with applications for next round due less than 90 days later on June 1. You also announced that our comments and feedback on our applications would not be available until sometime in April, which would further reduce that already short timeline for meaningful course correction to fewer than 60 days.